[NCUC E-team] Linux admin stuff

[William Drake]

This has ben quite the seminar Tapani.  Too bad I don’t have the bandwidth to really deal, but it’s obviously very helpful stuff.  Wouldn’t it make sense to organize these emails into a web document that e-teams present and future could easily reference?  Maybe password protected on the site?

BD


On Dec 17, 2013, at 1:40 PM, Tapani Tarvainen <ncuc at tapani.tarvainen.info> wrote:

> To complete the series, a few words about Linux system administration.
> 
> Once the system is up and running there is not much that
> needs to be done regularly.
> 
> At the very least, however, someone should read root's email and
> react to problems. It is redirected simply by /root/.forward
> and now comes to me - I want someone to take this over ASAP.
> (Bill, sorry, but if nobody volunteers I'll direct it to you
> and let you find someone else to take over at your leisure.)
> 
> Splitting this among several people would also be possible
> (as long as they don't both assume the other(s) will take care
> of everything...)
> 
> In particular disk space is likely to run out sometime soon(ish).
> Also, RAM is fairly low and some services (especially etherpad)
> tend to die when they run out of memory (and need to be restarted).
> 
> System software updates don't need much attention, security
> patches are installed automatically, other updates can be
> installed easily enough (apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade)
> but generally aren't urgent (a couple of times a year is enough).
> 
> Wordpress needs to be upgraded separately, as it has been
> manually installed (system-supplied version being too old)
> and fairly heavily customized. Skipping a version or two
> is generally no big deal, but running old version for years
> would probably not be a good idea.
> 
> Upgrading the operating system (Ubuntu LTS) to new release
> should be done every two years on the average, but it is
> generally not urgent (old versions are supported several years
> anyway). The process is nowadays usually very easy, especially
> on servers, but of course it's recommended to start by checking
> that backups are up to date (including databases).
> 
> Backups are now taken to two locations, in the 2nd disk
> at Gandi and in my personal backup server. I may leave
> the latter running for the time being, as it costs me
> basically nothing, and it's only for real emergencies
> (including a failure of the Gandi backup).
> The only care and feeding the former generally needs is making
> sure it doesn't run out of disk space, and it will start sending
> emails to root when that happens (easiest solution is
> purchasing more disk space from Gandi, although some could
> be saved by reducing backup frequency).
> Backups are done with rsnapshot and can be restored
> by simply copying from /backup/...
> 
> Finally, a reminder: there's a list of things
> that could and perhaps should be done at
> http://pad.ncuc.org/p/website-todo
> - not exactly a neat presentation, rather a random
> collection of ideas, but perhaps still useful.
> 
> -- 
> Tapani Tarvainen
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